Return to Lesbos. Valerie Taylor
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Femmes Fatales restores to print the best of women’s writing in the classic pulp genres of the mid-twentieth century. From mysteries to hard-boiled noir to taboo lesbian romance, these rediscovered queens of pulp offer subversive perspectives on a turbulent era.
Faith Baldwin
SKYSCRAPER
Vera Caspary
BEDELIA
LAURA
THE MAN WHO LOVED HIS WIFE
Gypsy Rose Lee
THE G-STRING MURDERS
MOTHER FINDS A BODY
Evelyn Piper
BUNNY LAKE IS MISSING
Olive Higgins Prouty
NOW, VOYAGER
Valerie Taylor
THE GIRLS IN 3-B
STRANGER ON LESBOS
RETURN TO LESBOS
Tereska Torrès
WOMEN’S BARRACKS
BY CECILE
VALERIE TAYLOR
Published in 2013 by the Feminist Press
at the City University of New York
The Graduate Center
365 Fifth Avenue, Suite 5406
New York, NY 10016
First Feminist Press edition
Text copyright © 1963 by Valerie Taylor
Originally published by Tower Publications, New York.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, used, or stored in any information retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the Feminist Press at the City University of New York, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Cover and text design by Drew Stevens.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Taylor, Valerie, 1913–1997
Return to Lesbos / Valerie Taylor.
pages cm
“Originally published by Tower Publications in 1963.”
ebook ISBN 978-1-55861-832-9
1. Lesbians—Fiction. 2. Jewish gays—Fiction.
3. Holocaust survivors—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3570.A957R4 2013
813′.54—dc23
2013017571
Table of Contents
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
About the Author
Also Available From the Feminist Press
1 KARLA’S PLACE WAS JUMPING. FRANCES OLLENFIELD stood at the edge of the sidewalk and watched the blue door swinging open and shut behind the couples: two girls in bermudas and knee socks, two slim boys moving gracefully in unison, more girls. Smoke and voices and juke music drifted out. Frances shivered a little, although it was a June evening in Chicago.
She hadn’t been in a gay bar for a year. She had promised never to visit one again. But her need was too strong. She took a deep breath and walked down the three stone steps, feeling her mouth go dry and her heart begin to hammer with excitement. The blue paint was flaking off the door and the gold scroll letters had faded. It’s been a while, Frances thought.
Inside, though, nothing had changed. The Friday-night crowd was out: all the tables were taken and there wasn’t an empty stool at the bar. The space around the jukebox was jammed with slowly moving dancers, boys with boys and girls with girls. The faces were different, but the crowd was the same.
Past a row of heads and shoulders she could see Mickey at the bar, rosy cheeked and as happy looking as ever, her curly dark hair combed flat and her Ivy League shirtsleeves rolled up. Frances felt better. Mickey never forgot a customer. Seeing a couple pocket their change and get up, she elbowed a path across the crowded room and took one of the vacated stools. She said in a low voice, “Hi, Mickey.”
“Well, hi. Martini?”
“That’s right.”
“You haven’t been around for a while,” Mickey said, swabbing a section of counter with a pink cellulose sponge. “You went back to your husband, didn’t you?”
She looked sharply at Mickey. Mickey met the look straight on. “I didn’t mean to be nosy, only you used to come in with that Baker chick all the time. I see her once in a while.”
With her new girl, Frances thought bitterly. She said, “Yeah, I went back to my husband. It hasn’t worked out very well.”
“Never